Animated true-daylight wallpaper for Gnome

[lyncis]

That's all about animated wallpapers: having heard that Gnome 2.22+ can use time-lapsed wallpapers, and having heard also about existence of day and night versions of same wallpaper, I've been wondering of automatic synchronization of wallpaper's day and night time with real sunrise and sunset.

So, I've decided, using Geocoding API and time-lapsed wallpaper ability of Gnome, to write a small script, that will synchronize wallpaper's day-to-night-transition-time according to real sunrise and sunset time.

What it does:

• Calculates your true sunset and sunrise time
• Updates background file to make Gnome understand when to start transition from day to night;
• Then Gnome automatically makes smooth transition (apx. 30-60min) — like out of your windows;
• And it doesn't make a use of any of your system resource (it even goes to Yahoo! Geocoding API only once, at installation);

That's a small Perl script, with great examples of Yoritsuki daytime and night wallpapers (and 3 more). As soon as this script is suitable to any of wallpaper pairs, you can download it from Google Code (http://code.google.com/p/gnome-yoritsuki/) and adjust for your needs (very small Perl knowledge is required). That looks like:



But anyway, the original program comes with 4 predefined wallpapers (high-quality, I must say), so it will be enough to enjoy what the program does.

To install, follow my Gnome Animated Wallpaper Installation Guide

I wrote the whole thing in one day, so I would appreciate any feedback, either bug-reports, suggestions or wallpapers to include. So I wait for your feedback here, on my blog (http://lyncis.info/en/post/339), or on Google Code (http://code.google.com/p/gnome-yoritsuki/issues/list)

I've tested it only on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) Final, and it worked (and works) fine for me, so if you test it on other Gnome installation, please let me know.

Also, if you're interested in how it works, please let me know.

Thank you.

P.S. Not sure that I've chosen the right thread on forums.

[Glucklich]

You did chose the right section for your topic and I have to say that it is absolutely brilliant!
Unfortunately, I don't have the time to test it but its genius. Great idea indeed.

[oedipuss]

Thank you, that's fantastic!
It should be included in gnome by default, with a couple of nice examples!
Will it cycle between just two images (per set), or can more steps be added theoretically ?

[lyncis]

Theoretically there could be as many as you want images. I think about weather-based ones — based on NOAA data, as soon as we already have calculated coordinates — but I still haven't found weather variations of the same wallpaper (

[lyncis]

Definitely, it will be much easier and usabe to have:

• GUI;
• .deb — installer (maybe based on PPA);
• More Day/Night wallpapers (of course allowed to use).

Unfortunately, I'm keen only on Java-based GUIs, which is not preferable because of Java JRE dependency (15-16Mb BTW, can't remember if any JRE is installed on basic Ubuntu installation).

So, your help is welcome. Let's make our OS better together.

[coldReactive]

After doing the installation instructions, my wallpapers are still the same (homestar runner dangeresque bg). Do I have to run some command to start the animation?

Also, here's the output of what happened at the end:

ian@psumi:~/Backgrounds/gnome-yoritsuki$ ./bin/update.pl --res=1440x900 --install
Wallpaper resolution: 1440x900
Found your location: Chicago
Trying to geocode it... Got positive reply.
Trying to parse geoXML... Done.
Your calculated coordinates are 41.884150:-87.632409
Updating XML for wallpaper id: yoritsuki
Your resolution: 1920x1200
Background location: /home/ian/Backgrounds/gnome-yoritsuki/data/background-yoritsuki.xml
Invalid offset: CST

Also, the Daylight Time thing isn't in startup applications, so apparently, it failed somewhere.